


When You Were Young

by Chash



Series: Miss Atomic Bomb [23]
Category: The Immortals - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Daine is seventeen, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 17:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5384720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel! Numair gets to know Daine Sarrasri.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Were Young

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [thats-so-jokes](http://thats-so-jokes.tumblr.com/) for my 2015 holiday prompt fills!

Numair assumed, naively, that crushes were something he would stop getting once the first rush of puberty had passed. He had thought that he would start having feelings like an adult. He wasn’t entirely sure what that looked like,  _adult feelings_ , but he assumed they would happen. At some point. Just kind of naturally.

He’s six days away from his twenty-fifth birthday when Daine Sarrasri storms into his office hours and says, “Why didn’t you shut them up?”

He blinks, somewhat alarmed, and says, “Hello, Daine. How can I help you?”

He likes Daine, in an absent way. She does well on her assignments and is vocal in class without being overpowering about it. She came to a TA session he ran yesterday and he thought it had gone well, mostly. They’re always a bit of a mess, because half the students just want to complain about their grades, but it leads to some decent discussions. Now that he thinks about it, Daine  _was_  uncharacteristically quiet, but he’d assumed it wasn’t a big deal.

Now he’s worried she might murder him, so perhaps he should have taken things more seriously.

“That session last night! Did you hear what they were saying?”

“I do listen to the discussion–”

“Not the discussion. Those boys in the back, Dylan and Mark, when you were talking about the genetic differences between men and women, they were saying  _awful_  things.”

He blinks. He knows the two boys in question, and not in a good way. But he had missed that part. “I didn’t hear that, no,” he admits. “They must have been speaking too quietly.”

“It sounded like they did it a lot,” she says, reproachful.

“They usually sit in the back together when they come.”

She crosses her arms. “And are you going to do something about it?”

“I’ll keep my ears open.” Her eyes flash, and he hastens to add, “If I don’t hear anything myself in the next session, I will address it with them directly, but I would prefer if I had a specific incident I had witnessed, in addition to your report. To point to a pattern of behavior. I don’t like simply saying that I’ve had complaints without more information.”

She relaxes, smiles even, and Numair feels an unwelcome tug of attraction in his chest. That, by itself, is not unfamiliar, just inconvenient. He is regularly attracted to people. “Good,” she says. “I had some questions about the homework too. One of these questions is fair confusing.”

“My fault as well, I’m afraid. I wrote the problems.”

Her smile this time makes something twist inside him, and that’s when he realizes he’s in trouble.

“Well then, you’re the perfect person to explain it to me, aren’t you?”

He wets his lips and manages a smile in return. “I suppose I am, yes.”

*

Alanna gives him a free cupcake and a balloon that says  _birthday princess_  on it at the coffee shop six days later. “So, how does twenty-five feel? I always forget you’re so old. Because you’re very immature.”

“You are the worst friend I have,” he lies.

She snorts. “That means you’re doing friendship wrong. I have at least five friends worse than you.”

He pokes at the cupcake. It has pink frosting and an unlit candle in it. “I tend to assume I am doing everything wrong.”

Alanna rolls her eyes. “Starting twenty-five off right, I can tell,” she says, and he toasts her with his coffee.

*

He puts the balloon in his office out of lack of anything else to do it, so Daine sees it when she returns for office hours the next day.

He has been trying, ineffectually, to not develop a crush on Daine over the last week. She is, at a minimum, three years younger than he is, but more likely to be much, much younger. She  _looks_  young, probably a freshman or a sophomore. It is creepy to have a crush on her. Even leaving aside that he is her TA and in a position of authority and a thousand other things.

But when she knocks and smiles and comes into his office hours, he smiles back and feels ridiculous.

Then she asks, “Are you the birthday princess?” with a mischievous smile, and he feels ridiculous for unrelated reasons too.

“I was yesterday. I assume the crown has now passed to another.”

Daine laughs. “How awful for you. One day of power and then you lose your crown.”

“It was deserved,” he says. “I unfortunately went quite mad with power. Raising taxes, demanding tribute, enacting horrible laws. If time hadn’t naturally removed me, a revolution surely would have.”

He has no real idea what he’s saying, but Daine is laughing, so he smiles too. “I can’t imagine you as a corrupt despot, honestly,” she says.

“Consider yourself lucky you didn’t suffer under my tyrannical reign. Now, how can I help you?”

Her smile softens. “I just wanted to thank you for talking to Mark and Dylan yesterday. Some folk just let those things go.”

“No, I should thank you. I never would have known what was going on, if you hadn’t said anything. I tend to be focused on the discussions, I missed their asides entirely.”

“We can both be thankful, then,” she says, and it sounds like a parting line, which he suddenly doesn’t want at all.

Or, not suddenly, truth be told.

“Were the problems better written this week?” he asks. “No concerns?”

Her smile flashes again. “Better written,” she agrees. “But I still have some concerns.”

“Please,” he says. “I’m all ears.”

*

“How old does a girl have to be for it to not be weird for me to be–interested in her?” Numair asks Alanna. Daine has been coming to his office hours every week, and every week, they spend more time talking about themselves and less time talking about the material. Daine’s a freshman, which means–nineteen, at the most. If she’s already had her birthday. He hasn’t figured out a good, non-creepy way to check on her age, but he’s pretty sure there is no age she could be that wouldn’t be bad, unless she took at least three gap years. Maybe two.

This is why he needs Alanna.

“Do I even want to know?” she asks, mild.

“I want to know, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”

Alanna sighs. “Why don’t you just tell me your actual issue and I’ll make fun of you based on facts, not guesses.”

“Why did I think talking to you was a good idea?”

“I don’t know,” she says, cheerful. “Tell me.”

He sighs. “One of the freshmen in my intro bio class.”

“Okay, no, I don’t care how old she is, that’s weird. You’re her TA.”

“I know.”

“Also she’s a freshmen, but that’s kind of a separate issue. Not that it’s not an issue, but–I don’t know. That would depend more on her personally. I’m not touching it. If you’ve still got a thing for her once she’s out of your class, we can have another conversation about age-appropriate feelings.” She gives him a wry smile. “A freshman? Really?”

“It wasn’t my  _idea_ ,” he says. “Believe me, I would prefer to never develop feelings at all.”

Her expression softens. “Yeah, okay, me too. I’ll give you a free  _I’m creepy and inappropriate_  latte.”

“I can’t believe you’re my best friend.”

“I am giving you a free latte.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “At least there’s that.”

*

He wouldn’t have expected it to be so much worse, to discover Daine was only seventeen. He hadn’t realized until she said it how important it was to him that she was  _eighteen_ , an  _adult_. He still felt, broadly, like a creep, but at least he was, legally speaking, in the clear.

Instead, she’s seventeen, and he’s not only a creep, but an actual  _felon_. Or at least a criminal. He hasn’t done any particular research on the legality because, well. He feels shitty enough about himself without knowing which exact laws he would break if he made a move he’s not going to make on a girl he’s not allowed to make a move on in the first place. It’s really good news, in a way. His feelings are independent of her age, so he didn’t really screw up. Not as badly as he could have.

“What?” Daine asks, oblivious to his internal conflict. “I’ll be a counselor next year.”

“Ah,” he says. “You just–it’s nothing.”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be foolish, Numair. If it bothers you so much, my birthday is in June. Everyone likes to make such a big deal about how young I am, but in ten years, it won’t matter at all.”

George and Alanna will, in ten years,  _still_  call Daine his underage girlfriend. But aside from that, she’s absolutely right.

It really doesn’t matter at all.


End file.
